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WILLIAM E. CHANDLER TO GEORGE G. FOGG, 



Washington, June 15, 1868. 
Oeorge G. Fogg, Esq., 

Concord, N. H., 
Sir: I am not a little surprised at yuiir persistent, false, 
and malignant attacks upon me and my friends in the 
Concord Daily Monitor. I did not wonder that your disap- 
pointment at not being able by duplicity and treachery to 
secure continued employment and office from President 
Johnson as his friend, and also at the same time to rule the 
Eepublican party of New Hampshire, had soured your 
temper and inflamed your anger against me as one supposed 
obstacle to your success ; but I did not think that even your 
infatuation and bad temper would lead you into such a 
reckless disregard of truth and decency as that manifested 
in your recent newspaper calumnies. I can only account for 
your recklessness by supposing that you believe that the 
ownership of a newspaper, your responsibility and control of 
which you denied to Andrew Johnson when seeking office 
for yourself and friends, makes you invulnerable, and will 
prevent any adequate reply to your false charges and unjust 
assaults. In this belief you may be correct, for I certainly 
cannot reply to you as often and as publicly as you assail 
me, and can only in the form of this letter, addressed to you 
directly, remind you of facts which ought to make you 
ashamed of your own conduct if sensibility has not long 
since abandoned you. If your assaults are continued, I may 
possibly be obliged to rest in the belief that the personal 
malignity and hatred which evidently moves them will 
counteract and discredit all apparently injurious statements 
they may contain. The Monitor, through which you now 



assail nie, was originally established in hostility to the 
Republican party, and also for tlie purpose of attacking and 
destroying nie and my immediate political friends in New 
Hampshire. We have outlived its first attacks, and have 
been vindicated by results. We shall as certainly survive 
its new assaults and threatenings, and hope and believe the 
Republican party will be equally fortunate. 

It is quite singular that your hatred of me, which so 
suddenl}^ develoi)ed itself after the Republican State Con- 
vention, in Concord, of December 18, 1867, in newspaper 
articles attacking my personal and political integrity, should 
have been so studiously concealed by you for more than two 
years. Immediately upon your return from Switzerland, in 
1865, you entered into relations with me which you evi- 
dently desired should be friendly and intimate. You 
continued to invite my assistance in securing for you 
employment <ind office from tlie Government, and in fur- 
thering your political projects in New Hampshire, without 
intimating to me or any friend of mine your hostility until 
the meeting of the Republican State Committee on December 
17, 1867, when, possibly disappointed by your inability to 
control the proceedings of the Committee and the Conven- 
tion, you made an ill-tempered and malignant personal 
attack upon me, which you have followed up in many ways 
to the present moment. While I recognize your right to 
oppose me politically, I do not admit, neither will any just 
man claim that you are entitled, after inviting my friendship 
and assistance for two years, to turn about and, from 
political disappointment, attempt by reckless assertions to 
injure my personal, professional, and political character. 
That for this length of time you concealed your sentiments, 
and only attack me from disappointed personal ambition, 
is a sufficient reason for disbelieving your slanderous and 
unsupported statements. 

In reference to your charges against my personal integrity 
and political fidelity, I care to say but little beyond a simple 
denial of their truth, preferring to ask you whether my 
friends or the public will be likely to attach much credit 
to them in view of the motives which animate you and 



your own }»olitical trickerv since 3'our return from Swit- 
zerland. It is true that, having; held office in the Treas- 
ury Department tor two years and a half, I resigned mainly 
on account of increasing ill health, and am now tempora- 
rily, like many others, i)racticing my profession in Wash- 
ington, while retaining my legal domicil in my native 
city and State. Never, while in office or since leaving 
it, have I been guilty of any dishonest action i.r dishon- 
orable practice, nor have I ever received or aided in securing, 
directly or indirectly, one dollar wrongfully from the 
Government; and every statement made by you, which, if 
true, would in any way affect my character for integrity, is 
false. It is easy to assert dishonesty oC any one; it is not 
always easy to prove it. Neither is it always j)0ssible for 
the party attacked to prove the negative. 1 nnist leave the 
issue which you have made to be ilecided by those who know 
the man that makes the charges, and his motives, and who 
know me, and have had opportunities of judging of my life 
aud character. 

That corruption, in its worst forms, has existed within 
and around the Departments of the Government during the 
present administration, is undoubtedly true; that dishonest 
officers have been unfiithful to tiielr trusts is also true. 
But a newspaper editor, who therefore makes indiscriminate 
and unfounded charges against all men in office does more 
injury than good, for the tendency of suclj assaults is to 
discourage and drive out of service honest officers, leaving 
all the important and responsible positions to be filled by 
dishonest and unworthy men. If you believe it just to 
charge dishonesty upon every one who has had important 
trusts committed to him, and has therefore had opportunities 
for peculation, the same charge may with force and pro- 
priety, be made against you. 

In April, 1866, while you were soliciting employment 
from President Johnson and Secretary McCuUoch, you were 
retained as counsel for the Government, and, at a compen- 
sation of six thousand dollars for two months" service, 
employed at New Orleans in deciding what should be done 
with a larore amount of cotton which had been seized as 



Confederate propertv. It was hoped yon had character and 

integrity; that yon wonhl he faithfnl to the Ciovernnient, 

and endeavor to protect its interest.^ and hold for it the 

cotton which rightfnlly belonged to it. The result of your 

employment was, that yon surrendered to private claimants 

nine thousand six hundred and sixtij-Jive hales of cotton, 

valued at about two millions op dollars, being every bale of 

)tton under seizure at the time you were employed, except 

twelve, and for those there appeared no claimant ! I desire 

only to ask you in your own choice phrases whether you 

you were faithfnl to your dnty to the Government in relation 

to this cotton — whether you were connected with any 

■'steal," or "job," or ''corruption," or ''bribery" in 

onnection therewith — whether under your management, 

the Government cotton at New Orleans became " a prey to 

thieves and robbers," and whether or not you were at this 

time one of " McCulloch's assistants and subordinates " that 

•thieved and helped others thieve in office as long as was 

safe or practicable?" Did you '• plunder the Government" 

and " line your own pocket?" If not, a prudent man would 

advise you to be careful how you attack without reason the 

Imputation of others who may by possibility have done their 

lutv a^ faithfullv and as honestly a=! vou claim to have done 

} <inv<. 

The attempt made by you to induce the Republicans of 
New Hampshire to believe that I have ever wavered in my 
attachment to Republican principles would prove entirely 
unsuccessful even without an exposure of your own connec- 
tion with President Johnson. In common with four-fifths 
of the Republican party, I felt anxious up to the time of the 
Philadelphia Convention, to prevent a final and complete 
rupture between the President and those that elected him to 
office. After that Convention I gave up the hope, and from 
that time to the present, have never, in Washington, nor 1 
believe in New Hampshire, been honestly believed by any 
one to have the least political .sympathy or affiliation with 
Andrew John.son or his administration. That I have been 
faithful to the interests of the Republican party, the con- 
stant attacks of the copperhead National Intelligencer of this 



city, most abundantly juovc. Your specific statement that T 
procured the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention an 
audience with President Johnson, " promising to give hiiu 
three Conservative members of Congress from New Hamp- 
shire," is false and i)ase. This charge and all your other 
charges affecting my political integrity you do not believe 
yourself. You knew them to be false when you made them. 
It is true that I have endeavored, while in office, to bo 
courteous to every gentleman visiting the Treasury Depart- 
ment, and that I have preserved friendly personal relations 
with many members of the Administration who have always 
known tlie strengtii and earnestness of my devotion to the 
Republican party, and my determination to aid in preserving 
at all hazards its integrity and its ascendency. I certainly 
cannot, like yourself, one day in Washington, solicit favors, 
employment, and office from ^Ir. Jolmson, Mr. McCulloch. 
and Mr. Welles, and the next day in New Hampshire de- 
nounce tliem publicly as assassins ami thieves. 

Tliere are sundry miscellaneous false statements in your 
rej)eated newspaper articles that are i)ossibly worthy of 
notice, but I care only to allude to the statement that 1 
aided " a crew of thieves " in breaking down John P. Hale 
on account of his denunciations of the mismanagement of 
the Navy Department. It cannot be friendship to Mr. Hale 
that leads you to make this charge. In common with two 
hundred and five other Republican members of the Legisla- 
ture, I aided in nominating a Senator to succeed Mr. Hale, 
In the caucus Mr. Hale received only thirty-five votes on 
the first ballot ; the balance were divided between Mr. Cra- 
gin, General Marston, and others, and Mv. Cragin was 
finally nominated. It was conceded by every one that the 
principal reason for Mr. Hale's defeat was the fact that, 
while a Senator in Congress, for a fee of three thousand 
dollars, lie procured from the War De})artmeut the release 
of one Hunt from confinement at Fortress Monroe, where 
he was imprisoned for frauds upon the Government. With 
as much justice as is contained in your charges against rae, 
you denounce all the members of the Legislature who aided 
in the election of Senator Cragin in the place of Mr. Hale 



6 

as a " crew of thieves." Was it, do 3^011 think, Mr. Hale's 
(leniinciations of the corrnptions of the Navy Department, 
or his taking a fee from Hunt while a Senator, that ensured 
liis defeat? What do you think of the propriety of Mr. 
Hale's taking this fee? Did you do such things while a 
three months' Senator in Congress? Did you urge and 
prosecute claims against the Government on account of 
guns manufactured for the War Department, and did you 
or not receive any compensation for so doing? 

Perhaps I ought also, in view of your allusions to the 
offices I have held, to remind you that you have not been 
without office or the receipt of money from the Government 
except during those brief periods when it was unavoidable. 
In 1846 you were Secretary of State ; subsequently you 
were secretary to tlie Kansas Investigating Committee, and 
held the office till you ran away from Kansas for fear of the 
border ruffians. In 1855, when the Republicans first car- 
ried New Hampshire, you became State Reporter ; you were 
State Printer from time to time, and at last went Minister 
to Switzerland, where, by living meanly and in a manner 
discreditable to an American Minister, while drawing your 
salary of seven tliousand five hundred dollars in gold, on 
the pretence that you were spending it for the ex{)enses of 
your mission and to maintain the dignity of your position, 
converting two-thirds of it into greenbacks, thereby doub- 
ling it, and investing it in untaxable bonds now worth more 
than par, you amassed a fortune of forty or fifty tiiousanp 
DOLLARS, while those at home were fighting the severest 
political and military contests the country ever knew ; the 
soldier receiving for his valor and services iliirteen dollam a 
month in greenbacks. Upon your return you immediately 
secured employment by the Government at large compensa- 
tion, and by a "characteristic intrigue" succeeded in get- 
ting a temporary appointment as United States Senator. 
Are you not satisfied ?— or is it because you cannot be 
immediately still further rewarded for assisting at tlie 
" birth and christening " of the Republican party — cannot 
longer, through "Andrew Johnson's kitchen," by bending 
the "suppliant hinges of the knee," get "up to the arm- 



pits in Uncle tSani's strong box," nor "• wade up to the eyes 
in public plunder," that you raise the hue and cry that 
"every honest member of the party is to be crushed out," 
and then proceed to pour your cowardly maledictions upon 
my devoted head ? 

Have you never stopped to reflect that you do not come 
with clean hands to make assaults upon my political and 
personal reputation with the intention of injuring my 
standing with the Kepublicans of New Hampshire? Since 
the Philadelphia Convention you have been the only New 
Hampshire Kei)ublican pretending to a regular standing in 
the party who han been upon terms of intimacy icitli Andrew 
Johnson. Immediately upon your return from Switzerland 
you solicited employment from the President and the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury as a special agent of the Treasury 
Department in Europe. You received employment from the 
Department as cotton-lawyer at New Orleans, receiving six 
thousand dollars for two montiis' time and opportunities, 
(from which sum you laid up more money than 1 have been 
able to save during my whole stay in Washington.) 

You aided in procuring from Andrew Johnson the appoint- 
ment of Hon. Daniel Clark as District Judge for New Hamp- 
shire, by representing, among other things, that (rovernor 
Smyth would appoint you to fill out Mr. Clark's term in 
the Senate, and that you would fjo into the Senate ojyposed to 
impeachment, and as his, the President's, personal friend. 

The President being aware that the Independent Democrat, 
published by Fogg & Hadley, was, under the management 
of Mr. Hadlay, attacking him for forsaking the llepublican 
l)arty, yoit denied that yon had any control over the pajier, and 
disavowed its sentiments. 

During your brief but brilliant Senatorial career of three 
months, you continued on intimate personal relations with 
the President, visited and dined at the White House, and 
upon going out of the Senate, in March, 1867, you renewed 
your application to the President, the Secretary of the 
Treasury, and myself, for appointment as agent of the 
Treasury Department in Europe. 

You continued your personal relations with the President 



8 

and his family even down to the vote of the Articles of 
Impeachment, so that your name was mentioned for various 
important offices within his gift ; and as late as Januar'y, 
1868, witJmi one month hefore Articles of Impeachment were 
voted, you had a private interview with the President at the 
White House, and during that visit to Washington you 
solicited and procured to be solicited for you the office of 
Assistant Treasurer of the United States at Boston. 

And yet, in the face of all these facts, known to you, you 
have the courage— relying upon the control and ownership 
of a daily and weekly newspaper, to whose frequent assaults 
I cannot reply — to attack my political integrity, and de- 
nounce mo as a Johnson man ! Who has been " playing a 
triple role?" Who is the freshest from "Andrew John- 
son's kitchen?" Who has been "bending the suppliant 
hinges of the knee?" 

It is almost impossible for those who knew you before you 
went to Switzerland, when you were a poor, although even 
then an overbearing and pretentious man, and have not 
learned how wealth and inordinate ambition have changed 
your character or developed bad qualities previously partly 
latent, readily to realize and to account for the persistent 
malignity with which you have pursued me since you found 
that I could not always be made subservient to the promo- 
tion of your already overgrown personal fortunes and polit- 
ical consequence. 

You have used the privilege accorded you on account of 
your temjjorary Senatorial office, to go upon the floors of 
both Houses of Congress for the purpose of promoting the 
passage of a bill designed as a reflection upon and an injury 
to me. While doing this you have been bold and reckless 
in your false statements, and have not hesitated to use your 
own connection with cotton cases for the purpose of gaining 
credence for your assertions, when, with more reason upon 
the facts, the charges of dishonesty which you have so reck- 
lessly made might be turned against your own character 
and reputation. 

Transferring again your hostility to New Hampshire, upon 
the first mention of my name as a delegate to Chicago, you 



y 

renewed your assaults upon me at home, and pursued me 
with them until after my election, and thence to the Chica<!;o 
Convention, enlarging your assaults to attacks upon the 
State Convention and the whole New Hampshire delegation 
to Chicago. 

Your political duplicity in connection with the Chicago 
nomination is therefore worth your recollection. You pre- 
tended to he favorable to the nomination of Senator Wilson 
as Vice President, and represented to him that you would 
endeavor to induce the withdrawal of Hannibal Hamlin, in 
order to unite New England upon Mr. Wilson. You went 
to Chicago, and finding the New Hampshire delegation 
uniting upon Mr. Wilson as their first choice, you labored 
in behalf of Mr. Hamlin, and thereby aided in destroying 
the chances of Mr. Wilson's nomination. 

A fortnight before the Chicago Convention you came to 
Washington, and, when impeachment seemed likely to suc- 
ceed, approached Senator Wade with offers of assistance, 
and engaged to secure the vote of the New Hampshire dele- 
gation for him as their second, if not their first, choice for 
Vice President, denouncing me and my friends as " Colfax 
men." 

At Chicago, impeacliment having failed, and Mr. Wade 
being no longer likely to appoint you to a Cabinet office or a 
foreign mission, you denounced the old patriot and j)ioneer 
of Piepublicanism as the worst ix)ssible man to nominate, 
and have continued in your paper to assail him, and also to 
assail the delegation who, after a conference and compromise 
of all differences of opinion, agreed to vote first for Henry 
Wilson and then for Benjamin F. Wade, if for no other 
reason, to show that their friendship for him was not like 
yours, measured solely by his power of conferring office antl 
patronage. 

If, with this your personal and political record since you 
acquired wealth by easy office in Switzerland, while I was 
endeavoring, in my humble way, to keep in power the 
Republican party at liome, you continue to vilify me behind 
the columns of a newspaper, I shall endeavor, wi.th patience, 
to await the effect which your course will have upon the 
Republicans of New Hampshire, who always, in a mosi 



10 

gratifying manner, have sustained me and those who have 
acted with rae politically, and who, I believe, will always 
sustain us when we are fighting either the o[)en enemy or 
false and dangerous pretended friends. In the future, as 
well as in the past, I am willing that the earnest and true 
Republicans of Ward Five in the city of Concord, of the 
whole cit}^, and of the State of New Hampshire, should 
judge between you and me. . • 

Indeed I have less fears for myself than I have for the 
Republican party of New Hampshire. Your threats to des- 
troy it unless it will disconnect itself from the lead of men 
whom it has hitherto trusted; your defence of the men who are 
now endeavoring to demoralize and destroy the Republican 
party of the nation ; your personal conduct and the tone of 
your paper for the last three months, all indicate that you 
are preparing, if the time of danger and trial to tlie part)' 
comes, to go over to the enemy. 

The Republican party is never to be defeated in an open 
fight with copperheads ; it will only fail through the side 
attacks of a combination of ambitious, selfish and disap- 
pointed Republicans who, having received high honors from 
the i)arty_, are willing to destroy it unless they can be still 
furtlier advanced. The whole ho])eofthe Democracy now 
rests in securing the aid of such a combination. The con- 
spiracy is already formed ; the excuses to be used by the men 
who intend to go into it are already framed and foreshadowed, 
and if it seems likely that success can be achieved, the plot 
will go forward, and you will, secretly or openly join it. A 
man who will carry on intrigues with President Johnson 
while seeking favor of the Republicans of New Hampshire ; 
who will deny his editorship of the paper on account of which 
he seeks such favor ; who will defend the enemies of the 
party while pretending to support it ; who will prove as 
false and passionate, as selfish, as mendacious and as treach- 
erous as you have been since your return from Switzerland, 
is desperate enough for any action, however base, that seems 
likely to succeed. If the Republican party of New Hamp- 
shire and tha country is saved, it will be in spite of, and not 
by the aid of, such conspirators. 

WILLIAM E. CHANDLER. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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